Monday Mani: MOVEMBER

Today's Monday Mani theme is Movember. The idea is to raise awareness for prostate cancer. Movember comes in because mustaches are the symbol and some men (and maybe women!) participate in something call No Shave November. My husband's done it in the past, but he has a full beard so it's not much different.

I received Glam Polish Lisbeth and decided to use this stunner as the base for my Movember mani. I used three coats of Lisbeth to get full coverage and depth. The details are all black acrylic paint.

I recently changed up my nail shape I got a big corner break.

It's not my favorite, but seems to be more "in" than square or squaoval these days.

Monday Mani: Different Color on Each Nail

In the past, I've mentioned Monday Manis at Polish-Aholics Anonymous on Facebook. Well, they've been coming back!

This week, the voted in theme is to have every nail be a different color. We agreed that it only needed to be each nail on one hand, not all ten digits.

I had a few ideas in mind and had a hard time narrowing it down.

I ended up going with a mani using only (well, mostly) ManGlaze polishes. Starting at the thumb, the colors are Santorum, Fuggen Ugly, Fatty's Got More Blood, Nawsome Sauce, and ILF. The dots are Barry M Gold Foil. 

When I did this mani, I used the matte sandwich technique to help it last longer.

I applied two coats of each matte polish, then one coat of Rica Glossy Glam. Let dry. Then apply one more coat of your matte polish. I wore this mani for only two days, but I only had a tiny chip. That's good wear time for a matte mani and for me as well! I'm super hard on my nails.

And here's a bonus pedi I did.

June Nail Art Challenge, Day 30: Zoo animals

Last day, woot woot! I have to say it's been totally fun and I'm glad I did it this month. July is going to be completely busy as in the just first few days alone my sister-in-law (who used to live in Ireland until her visa expired but is going back to the UK in the fall for school) and her Irish boyfriend (red hair and full beard, totally awesome!) are visiting for the 4th and then my birthday is on the 6th. On the 8th, I start a very part-time job as a personal assistant/mother's helper. The 3rd weekend of the month is a massive family reunion for my maternal grandfather's family and a Wisconsin polish meet up. Plus TONS of minor things in there. And August is just as busy! Whew! 

So for today's mani, I turned to my trusty friend Google and found an awesome tutorial for super cute elephants from Adventures In Acetone.

The base color is Rimmel Blue Eyed Girl. The elephant is Rimmel Grey Matter. His ears are Zoya Shelby. The rest of the colors are acrylic paint or polishes I custom mixed.

And here's a collage with all this month's designs!

June Nail Art Challenge, Day 21: Aboriginal

When I first saw the theme "aboriginal," my mind immediately went to those dotted paintings. As I'm a huge history nerd (one of my majors in college), I needed to Google and find out more.

Aboriginal refers to natives from Australia. The dotted paintings that so many think of are a newer form of art amongst the Aboriginals. They art form is called Papunya after the region of Australia where it started in the 1970s. Yep, it's new!

You can see my inspiration photo (courtesy Google) and resulting mani below.

The base is Sinful Colors Ardoise. The details are Zoya Riley and Wet n Wild French White Creme.

Sally Hansen Grey Area

Have you ever pulled out a polish and had it trigger a memory? Maybe it's one you received as a special gift. Maybe the name triggers a memory entirely unrelated to the polish.

Sally Hansen Grey Area triggered a memory for me. I had been wanting to use it (again) for a while. It just didn't seem the right fit for several nail art designs I've done lately though. So the other day, I said EFF IT! Pulled it out and got to polishing.

And then BAM! came the memory. This polish is what started it all. I've loved polish since I can remember, but this is the one that started the collection and the searching for nail art ideas and finding blogs like Nail Nerd and Chloe's Nails and then starting this blog and then just everything.

And you know what? I still love this polish.

Gelish Cashmere Kind of Gal

Blah blah blah excuse why I haven't posted blah blah blah.

Sorry everyone, but life gets in the way.

Anyway I did these gel nails last Friday and they lasted well for me with no chipping. When I gave my son a bath tonight though, they all started peeling off. No idea why :/

Base: Gelish Cashmere Kind of Gal (I need three coats and it was sorta runny so I had a hard time keeping it from flooding).

Details were done using white acrylic paint.

Grey with neon polka dots

Just a quickie post for today.

Rimmel Grey Matter

Lime Crime Peaches <3 Cream

Valentine's Day: Pink and Grey

Just a quick post today. I have company coming over today, tomorrow, and Monday plus we're going out tomorrow and Sunday! Hence the crappy cuticles because I've been cleaning, though my husband did do quite a bit last night while I was sleeping as a Valentine's Day gift.

Rimmel Grey Matter

Zoya Shelby

Wet n Wild French White Creme

Valentine's Day: Cupid

I plan on trying to do as many Valentine's Day manis as I can before the day! I might post a few after because I have soooo many ideas!

This is the mani I'm currently wearing, but I have another that I did earlier this week that I'll post over the weekend. Then I'm hoping to fit in two more: one for next week and one for the actual day of (or rather the day after since my husband works on Valentine's Day and we're gonna go out the next day while my amazing mom watches our wee one).

Anyway, onto this mani! I've mentioned the Baby Center group before, and our threadly challenge was to do nail transfers. They could be simple store bought stickers/decals or you could make your own using the freezer bag/parchment paper/page protector method. I chose to make my own using the advanced stamping method.

I used all Zoya polishes for this other than my stamping polish. I started with a base of Zoya Dove and added the hearts/dots using Zoya Sooki (red), Zoya Shelby (pink), and Zoya Kieko (purple).

To do the stamp, I started the process like normal using Konad Black and Cheeky Jumbo 3 (European Romance). I left the stamp on my stamper and let it dry for a bit. Then I carefully filled in the hearts and let that dry. Next I added a thick layer of top coat and let it dry for probably about 2 hours. After applying my base coat on my nails and letting it dry a bit, I gently peeled my stamp off the stamper, trimmed it, added top coat to my nail, applied the decal and gently pushed it down! Whew! I cleaned up the edges (very easy with acetone and a small brush since it's all nail polish), and added more top coat. It sounds hard, but it was pretty easy!

With having a baby, this was easy to do since the process could be easily spread out. I definitely plan on using this technique more!

Black ombré stripes

Colors used: Wet n Wild Black Creme, Rimmel Grey Matter, Zoya Dove, and Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner

Zoya London Snowflakes

I saw this idea from Geeky Owl and loved it so I recreated it! My snowflakes are a wee bit different, but everything else is the same.

Base: two coats Zoya London

Stamped with Konad White and Bundle Monster plates

Zoya Claudine

Base: 2 coats Zoya Claudine

Water decals from Born Pretty Store

Spiderwebs and Raindrops

I used a base of 2 coats of Rimmel Grey Matter and followed it up with one thick coat of Illamasqua Raindrops. I like the sorta stormy/glistening effect this created.

Then I freehanded spiderwebs using Barry M Silver Foil. The spider was done with Wet n Wild Black Creme and Zoya Isla for the eyes.

Matte Graveyard

I did some simple graveyard nails using all matte polishes.

Base China Glaze Stone Cold

Gravestone ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly

Trees Sinful Colors Leather Loose

Grass Sinful Colors Rise and Shine

Roses Layla Fire It Up

Details Sinful Colors Cold Leather

Rainbow Clouds

We had some awesome summer storms here so I was inspired to do this nail art. I used Zoya Dove topped with Candeo Colors Sprouse for the main nails. The accent nail with clouds used various colors.

Funky Fingers Partly Cloudy

PI had my mom pick this up for me at 5 Below since they're aren't any of those stores in Wisconsin. Funky Fingers Partly Cloudy is a color changing polish that goes from teal to grey. I never did find any sun when I wore this so I don't have any shots of the color change for you. Still, I love the black skittle I came up with.

Black Poppy Skittles

I belong to an awesome nail polish group where we swap polish but also post polish for free (just pay postage!).  Today's feature polish is one that I just paid postage for :)

This is a dark teal polish courtesy of Black Poppy. Black Poppy polish is sold at PacSun. Unfortunately, that's all I found out about this company. This is also no name or number on the polish.  But it's gorgeous!

I used two coats of the dark teal as my base coat. It was wonderfully opaque in one coat though. I needed the second to help cover up brush lines though and even things out.

The dark teal is soooo opaque that it stains though :( It's also watery so it flooded a bit and was hard to control. (Maybe that's why I got it for free).

But I still like it. The color is just too pretty not to! I left the dark teal polish by itself on my middle finger.

On my ring and thumb, I layered a coat of Lynnderella Connect the Dots.  I added a simple stripe on my index using China Glaze Stone Cold and left the matte finish there. On my pinkie, I used Wet n Wild Black Creme to create a gradient effect which looks so great with the dark teal.

I loved how this mani turned out so much that I couldn't stop myself from staring at it! That's especially dangerous while driving ;)

Raindrops Frogs

I decided to add some nail art to Illamasqua Raindrops. I went with this frog design, but I didn't follow the video and just freehanded base upon the picture.

My nails aren't quite long enough to do both the frog and the lily pads on the same nail so I split them up.  This could be a super cute design to add cover up tip wear by simply making sure the lily pads are on the tips only instead of by the cuticles like I did.

I used a ton of different colors for this design:

Light green: Sally Hansen Green with Envy
Green: Essie Mojito Madness
Light pink: Ulta Encore Pink
Pink: Pure Ice Peony
Wet N Wild Black Creme
Wet N Wild French White Creme

I used a small nail art brush for the whole design and it was super easy. I was a bit worried about the lily pads, but I just sorta did light pink blobs, outlined them in dark pink, and added some dark pink accents. They turned out great, but I love the one on my middle finger best. I do sorta like that the one on my pinkie kinda looks like a heart though <3

Illamasqua Raindrops

OMG, I'm soooo excited to be showing you this polish today!!! Can't you tell?!?

Illamasqua Raindrops has been on my wishlist for forever so I was super excited when it was announced that they were bringing it back! I managed to purchase this bottle from a nail polish sales Facebook group. I just couldn't help myself!

Raindrops is a beautiful light grey creme polish base with the tiniest hint of blue that has added silver/white flakies.  I love grey polish to begin with, but the flakies really make it stand out.

It had that great Illamasqua formula and went on in only two coats. I did one thinner one to set the foundation and one thicker one to add the color. I've been doing this method lately for application, and it seems to work well!

Inspired by: Popette by Mini Labo

I've been keeping a board on my Pinterest full of things as inspiration for manis.  I was browsing around and found this pin that I KNEW would be perfect for nail art on top of Ardoise.

The base color is almost an exact match for Aroise.

I took me a while to trace down the original source of this image, but it's a design by a French company called Mini Labo who used the pattern in some of their creations like this cute pencil pouch.

I took me a while to do this design, but I love it so much! The palette, the flowers, the sort of shabby-chic design.

I used a ton of colors to create this so I didn't write them all down. It would have taken forever! I can count about 12-14 different polishes used! I tried to match the colors but couldn't get them exactly right. Still, it turned out great!

As talented as I am (so modest, I know!), I knew I couldn't do this design on my right hand so I did some double polka dots using some of the colors from my nail art design. I hope you all liked this as much as I do!